As his Soyuz capsule crested to its highest point last Thursday, NASA astronaut Nick Hague could see the darkness of space and the curve of Earth out his window.

He and cosmonaut crewmate Alexey Ovchinin, the Soyuz commander, briefly felt weightless and saw their “zero-gravity indicators” — small stuffed dachsund and owl mascots — floating overhead, as if in space.

“It was a bittersweet, fleeting moment knowing that I got that close, but it wasn’t going to work out that time,” Hague, a 43-year-old Air Force colonel and father of two young boys, said Tuesday from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Expedition 57 crew members Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos (left) and Nick Hague of NASA (right) posed for pictures in front of their Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft.(Photo: NASA)

After two years of training for a six-month International Space Station expedition, Hague and Ovchinin were now focused on a very different mission: getting home alive.

Two minutes after their 4:40 a.m. EDT launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, an automated escape system had pulled their capsule away from a Soyuz-FG rocket as four first stage boosters burned out and began to fall away.

A problem during the separation of the stages triggered the abort — the first of a Soyuz crew in 35 years — before Hague, who was launching to space for the first time, knew what was happening.

The Soyuz MS-10 capsule shook from side to side. Hague heard an alarm and saw a blurry emergency light indicating a booster failure. It was the start of a bumpy roller coaster-like ride until the capsule's climb stopped.

“Your training takes over, and you realize that the thing that you can do to help yourself the most is to stay calm and execute the procedures as a team,” said Hague.

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft is launched with Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Nick Hague of NASA and Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. During the Soyuz spacecraft's climb to orbit, an anomaly occurred, resulting in an abort downrange. The crew was quickly recovered and is in good condition.(Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Following steps rehearsed dozens of times before launch, Ovchinin, a 47-year-old veteran of one spaceflight, programmed the Soyuz to execute a ballistic return to the ground, meaning it would descend at a steeper-than-usual angle.

Like a ball tossed in the air, it was time for the Soyuz to come back down.

For a few seconds as the capsule accelerated, the astronauts felt nearly seven times heavier than they would on the ground, enduring higher G-forces than on a normal Soyuz re-entry from space.

Hague checked that the capsule was angled properly and scanned the ground below to see if they were headed for hilly or mountainous country, or water. Fortunately, the desert below was as flat as the region from which they recently had blasted off.

In Russian, Hague and Ovchinin updated each other and radioed their status to mission controllers and search-and-rescue teams already speeding toward the projected landing area in all-terrain vehicles and helicopters.

Parachutes deployed, abruptly jerking the capsule as its speed braked and its downward coast continued. Retro rockets fired moments before the Soyuz hit the ground with a thud and skidded to a stop on its side.

In this photo provided by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, the rescue team gathered next to the Soyuz MS-10 space capsule after it made an emergency landing in a field about 280 miles northeast of Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos' Alexei Ovchinin lifted off as scheduled at 2:40 p.m. (0840 GMT; 4:40 a.m. EDT) Thursday from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but their Soyuz booster rocket failed about two minutes after the launch.(Photo: AP)

Upside down, looking at dirt a foot away out the window, Hague took his first deep breath, then exchanged wide grins and shook hands with Ovchinin. Uninjured, they joked about their short flight.

Their 34-minute emergency ride felt like it had passed in an instant.

“I imagined that my first trip to outer space was going to be a memorable one,” Hague joked Tuesday. “I didn’t expect it to be quite this memorable.”

After rescue crews extracted the crew, Hague called his wife, Catie, on a satellite phone. It went to voicemail.

“I told her I’m fine, and it was one wild ride,” he said.

A few hours later, Hague got off a plane at the launch site and embraced Catie, his children and parents, unleashing pent up emotions.

Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Nick Hague of NASA embraces his wife Catie after landing at the Krayniy Airport with Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018 in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Hague and Ovchinin arrived from Zhezkazgan after Russian search-and-rescue teams brought them from the Soyuz landing site. During the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft's climb to orbit, an anomaly occurred, resulting in an abort downrange. The crew was quickly recovered and is in good condition.(Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Hague’s wife is an Air Force lieutenant colonel and public affairs officer who used to hear over the radio when one of his flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base was not going well. Hague had previously experienced in-flight failures, and being shot at while flying combat missions low and slow over Iraq.

“It just brings things into sharp clarity about your priorities in life, and why you’re doing what you’re doing,” he said.

Last week’s experience has not shaken Hague’s confidence in the importance of human spaceflight or in the safety of Soyuz vehicles that for more than seven years — since NASA’s final shuttle mission in 2011 — have provided humans’ only ride to the station.

"Everybody realizes that what we do is difficult and that there’s risk involved," said Hague. "It’s important to understand that it’s worth the risk. What we’re doing up there in the space station, what we’re doing for human exploration, it’s for the benefit of all, and it’s important that we continue to make those steps."

Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Nick Hague of NASA says farewell to his sons after having his Sokol suit pressure checked ahead of his launch on a Soyuz rocket with Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. During the Soyuz spacecraft's climb to orbit, an anomaly occurred, resulting in an abort downrange. The crew was quickly recovered and is in good condition.(Photo: NASA/Victor Zelentsov)

The rocket failure came on the heels of the discovery of a hole in a Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station that caused a potentially dangerous pressure leak. The hole was patched, but raised questions about shoddy quality controls, or worse, sabotage.

Russian commissions are investigating both problems, and officials are optimistic that another crew will be able to launch before the current station crew must return home, potentially abandoning the $100 billion station that has had people on board continuously for nearly 18 years.

Despite those concerns, the aborted launch was also a moment of triumph: Safety systems worked as designed to save lives.

“This was just a great example of those fail-safe systems stepping in and doing their job,” said an appreciative Hague. “We hadn’t had to use those on the Soyuz in 35 years, and it was still ready to go when it was needed.”

Back home in Houston, NASA astronaut Nick Hague on Tuesday discussed his experience during last Thursday's aborted Soyuz rocket launch to the International Space Station.(Photo: NASA TV)

Hague wasn’t back safely for long before he began to take the sort of good-natured ribbing a test pilot knows well. You should have tried harder, some colleagues joked.

Held overnight in a Baikonur hospital room for observation, Hague received a call from the International Space Station. NASA’s r Serena Auñón-Chancellor and and the European Space Agency’s Alexander Gerst joked they were eating the meal they had prepare for him and Ovchinin.

Had all gone according to plan, instead of talking to reporters from Houston on Tuesday, Hague would have been preparing for a spacewalk two days later to replace space station batteries.

But on Tuesday, Hague declared himself healthy and ready to fly again. NASA told him to take a break and spend time with his family, and he’s awaiting word on his next assignment and how soon he might get another shot to fly to space.

“What can you do? Sometimes you don’t get a vote. This time we’ll roll with the punches,” said Hague. “You just try to celebrate the little gifts that you get, like walking the boys to school this morning.”

Contact Dean at 321-917-4534 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.